A Facebook Alternative?

I hope this is a Facebook alternative. I’m sick of FB’s lack of respect for personal information. Too much abuse and too many hacks. I hate the setup where interacting with an entity through it’s app almost always requires me to share way too much personal information and give them the ability to write on my wall.

I realize the developer chooses this, but my complaint is that FB gives them the power and does not grant me the right to reject it and control my own information. For instance, perhaps I am OK giving an entity my profile pic and ability to write on my wall, but I want to reject the ability for them to grab all my friends’ information – I cannot do that. As a result, I rarely interact with business/apps, which means a portion of the social network is unavailable.

So I welcome Google’s entrance (re-entrance). I have not used the service yet, but I plan to. My initial fear is that it will be similar to Facebook in how much data it gives to marketer’s via apps and interfaces. Just because I make a comment on some blog or news site does not mean I want my comments posted across my social network – nor do I want to have to worry about settings for that every time I want to write a comment. I also don’t want everyone who goes to that site to see my comment tied to my picture, name, and location. I have a job and like you, I don’t always want my boss in my personal life. As our personal lives now extend to the Web, we want to be able to protect it.

So, I look forward to trying Google+. To that end, here’s a newbie’s guide: